Ernst edges closer to Senate run

Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst has secured a senior strategist for a likely U.S. Senate campaign, and Republicans now expect her to decide on the open-seat 2014 race within a month’s time.

Texas-based GOP strategist David Polyansky is advising Ernst as she decides on a run, according to multiple Republicans familiar with her preparations. The Maine Corps veteran-turned-political consultant was a former top aide to Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign and Michele Bachmann’s 2012 presidential bid, with extensive Iowa experience.

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Ernst has not yet fully filled out a team of consultants for the midterms, but is expected to do so in the coming weeks. Polyansky declined to comment on his work with Ernst.

“She’s making all the steps necessary to advance towards a campaign,” said one Republican close to Ernst. “I think she has the core nucleus [of a campaign] in place so that, should she decide to pull the trigger, she’d be able to do so fairly soon.”

A second-term lawmaker and Army veteran who served in Kuwait during the second Iraq war, Ernst is viewed by national Republicans as among the GOP’s more promising contenders in a race that numerous high-profile Republicans have declined to join.

Two candidates are already in the race on the GOP side: former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker and David Young, the former chief of staff to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley. Several other Republicans, including radio host Sam Clovis, former Reliant Energy executive Mark Jacobs and social conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats, are mulling campaigns of their own.

The presumptive Democratic nominee is Congressman Bruce Braley, who has a head start in both money and name recognition over the growing GOP field.